First Soviet Citizen Will Probated In The United States May 2026

The case has drawn intense interest from the estimated 750,000 former Soviet citizens living in the United States who naturalized after 1991. Many have outdated wills that refer to their "Soviet" birth.

“Every immigration attorney in the tristate area is calling us,” said Sarah Klein, Mrs. Volkov-Morrison’s estate executor. “Anastasia thought she was being thorough by writing a will. She never imagined that the country of her birth would come back to life in a legal form to claim her savings.” first soviet citizen will probated in the united states

Judge Marcus C. Rehnquist, presiding over the Chancery Court’s probate docket, has ordered a "dual-tracking" approach. A forensic genealogist will attempt to establish Mrs. Volkov-Morrison’s legal nationality at the time of the USSR’s dissolution, while a separate master will review the validity of the 2021 Will under Delaware’s Uniform Probate Code. The case has drawn intense interest from the

However, a competing claim has been filed by the , acting through a private law firm in Washington, D.C. Belarusian authorities argue that under Soviet inheritance law, which they claim as a predecessor state to the BSSR, a portion of any citizen’s estate must revert to the state if heirs are not "direct bloodline dependents." Volkov-Morrison’s estate executor

The probate hearing is scheduled for August 10, 2026. Legal experts predict the case will likely reach the Delaware Supreme Court, and possibly the U.S. Supreme Court, on the question of whether a non-existent state can be a party to a probate dispute.

“The USSR has no embassy, no consulate, and no legal successor for private civil matters dating to specific republics before the collapse,” said Professor Elena Hartwell of Columbia Law School, a specialist in post-Soviet inheritance law. “The court must determine: Was her ‘domicile of origin’ the USSR, the modern Republic of Belarus, or a stateless entity? This has never been adjudicated in an American probate court.”

“This is not about politics,” Judge Rehnquist stated from the bench. “It is about determining what set of laws—Delaware’s, the defunct USSR’s, or modern Belarus’s—governs the distribution of a deceased person’s property. We are in uncharted waters.”